Poems by Karen McAferty Morris

Melipona Gold

by Karen McAferty Morris

From Canary Summer 2024

Through live oaks with twisted trunks, Karen’s backyard view is Perdido Bay in the Florida panhandle. From her swing overlooking the water, she can watch dolphins and great blue herons.

The Mayans held them sacred,
the tiny stingless bees, believing
they flew up to the gods and brought
the golden liquid to mortals.

At the small bee sanctuary in Cozumel
we listen to an incantation in the ancient
language, and breathe dense smoky incense
in a cleansing ritual, then proceed
to another thatch-roofed hut sheltering us
from the blistering sun.

There, inside short pieces of hollow logs,
a dozen hives thrive in darkness.
Some are suspended by ropes,
others mounted on poles.

Only a tiny slit allows for the comings
and goings of the pollen gatherers
who hunt hibiscus and other tropical flowers.
Each hive has three queens, against risk.

The thin honey is not intended
for sweetening food or hot drinks,
but a drop in the eye or on a wound,
perhaps a spoonful each morning, is curative.

A small number of women
on the Yucatan mainland tend
to most of such hives, dutiful women
who work to ensure these endangered bees
can continue to make their healing honey,
balm to a damaged world.

© Karen McAferty Morris

Sharing Grapes

by Karen McAferty Morris

From Canary Fall 2023

Along my scuppernong arbor,
from spring’s green buds
through summer sun and storms,
the vines cling to their tightrope
and by September swell into a circus
of hazel clusters.
At harvest time, I make jelly,
boiling, mashing, straining, pouring
into diamond-patterned glass jars,
of shimmering topaz that return summer
at every opening.
I wonder if in the autumn darknesses
a possum, her thumb-size babies
drowsing in her pouch, wanders under it
and discovers a few fallen grapes,
and if the soft-mailed armadillo’s long sticky tongue
savors their dessert sweetness
after digging for grubs.
In my imaginings they roam under it,
far from the whirr of highways,
acres of asphalt, flashing neon lights,
an ordinary evening for them,
carrying on their carefree lives,
sweetly devoid of gratitude or curiosity,
shuffling through moonlight and shadow,
a sight that would catch my heart
in an aching wonder.

Snowline

by Karen McAferty Morris

From Canary Winter 2023-24

Only light winds swept across the valley from Hurricane Ridge on our girls-only hike a dozen
summers ago, a thousand miles from home. We posed against the far blue-gray silhouette of
jagged peaks whose generous snowpack lay like a thick frozen ocean surf. A passing hiker took
our picture, our arms crossed, smiling faces bathed in sunglow.

Eager to show this splendor on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula to my husband this past
summer, I led him to the trail where orange and white wildflowers were in freefall down the
shadowed slopes. My chatter stopped abruptly, for an instant I thought I hadn’t remembered it
correctly. Across the valley the snow on the distant ridge-tops nestled only in skimpy patches in
the crags and hollows.

Since then, I have imagined how, through millennia, the winter winds screamed across the valley,
and the peaks trapped the snow that fell and fell onto deep, wide glaciers. Today it is mostly rain
that falls upon them. And what do the winds say now?

My photo from this year’s hike shows the progression of age on my face and in my stance as I
once again pose against the ridge. I can see something restrained in my smile even though
nature’s beauty is all around. We expect time’s erosion on humans, but naively I believed that
winter snows would always be swirling and cascading, replenishing the mantle of those rugged
peaks of my cherished, not-so-long-ago memory. Like something in a fairy tale.